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"Is the End of Aids in Sight?"

Short answer - no. Even if they achieve their ambitious plan, 5% is still a large number. Look at how hard it has been to eradicate the last of polio, and that has a lifelong vaccine.



It's also a self-balancing system. As HIV becomes rarer, fewer people will be concerned about it, and therefore fewer will bother taking Prep daily. In turn, HIV becomes more infectious, and more people contract it.

It will probably stabilize with about 0.4% of humans being infected.

Lots of things affect about 0.4% of people, because that's rare enough that most people don't have any friend or colleague affected, and therefore don't take precautions.


Where did you get that 0.4% number? Is this a well-established statistic?


I'm curious too. My guess - 99.7% covers three standard deviations assuming a normal distribution - so just within three sigma?


No - just a guess based on the fact that me and the people around me tend to know ~250 people. Ie. there are probably 250 people who would find out if I got diabetes and died. Those people would then probably take a little more care of their health, and take steps to avoid the same fate.


> Ie. there are probably 250 people who would find out if I got diabetes and died. Those people would then probably take a little more care of their health

Around 14% of Americans have diabetes, so I don't think that really pans out.


But how many Americans are aware of diabetes and take at least some effort to avoid it? Eg. Drinking diet coke instead of regular Coke? Most...


Americans have a high prevalence of diabetes and it is definitely an outliner.


I'm curious too. I have actually heard that .04% number before when dealing with disease prevalence, but I don't remember where from.


IMO Prep has raised the risk of HIV by giving people a false sense of security.


Annual HIV diagnoses have declined (somewhat) in the US in recent years. So either it hasn't, or there are other bigger factors at play.


What is false about it? It is apparently close to 100% effective if you take it every day, that seems like a very real sense of security.


At this point, even if a genuine vaccine/cure for AIDS were developed; most people wouldn't even know until a loved one directly affected or afflicted told them.

The "breakthrough in AIDS research" or "cure in sight" headlines are so recurrent at this point that people are just numb to a real breakthrough.


> Short answer - no.

A tangent: if an article's title is a question, the answer, vast majority of time, is either "no", or not a clear answer at all. I'm sure articles that answer the title with "yes" exist, but I cannot even remember one.

> Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...




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